“Glad to hear it,” I said, feeling a mixture of disappointment and relief.
He flicked on the lamp. The room was filled with ultra violet blue light. His body glowed with a long sequence of letters. A tattoo of sorts.
“The double helix strand,” he explained. “Or at least the key component without which they couldn’t hope to replicate the formula and produce the virus.”
“Hiding it on your person in plain sight.” I shook my head. “Clever.”
“It’s the only hiding place I can trust. That’s why I don’t let anyone get too close. If you know what I mean.”
“Now I do.” I said, but I thought his emotional unavailability had less to do with a convenient deadly tattoo than some other secret in his personal history.
“OK, so what’s next?” I asked.
“That, Alice, depends entirely on you.”
“Well, you’re going nowhere for at least a few days or weeks,” I said. “So it looks like neither am I.”
He smiled with a hint of relief in his eyes. “Then I had better make us a shopping list.”
As he wrote down all the things we’d need, it began to dawn on me I was about to live with a man who I barely knew, but with each passing hour I felt more deeply attracted to. I felt I was perhaps the first person he had to learn to trust in a long time. The only problem was, sooner or later I knew I had to betray that trust.
TWENTY ONE
Alice’s Journal
Michael handed me the shopping list and a thick roll of cash. “We’ll have to make do without credit cards for the time being. I’m guessing you have the keys to the car.”
I looked at the long list. “That’s a few hours shopping,” I said. “I haven’t slept in over thirty six hours. Mind if I pick up the shopping tomorrow.”
Because he was so pale from the loss of blood I could tell when he was embarrassed as the merest hint of embarrassment brought color to his face.
“Of course,” he said, “you must be exhausted.”
“Just little.”
“Pick any room you like to sleep in,” Michael said.
“Will you need help up the staircase to your bedroom?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine on the medic room gurney.”
I bade him goodnight and climbed the staircase to his old bedroom. I took a shower in the en-suite.
I let the hot jets of water pummel my aching muscles as my mind wandered to the view of Michael’s naked torso of rippling muscles. I felt a sensation of tortured longing between my legs as the jets found my sweet spot.
I knew nothing good would come of it and turned the taps full on to cold. I shivered under the cold jets. But felt better for it.
I dried on a clean soft cotton towel and slid into the luxurious Egyptian cotton sheets. Within a few minutes I was asleep.
I woke with a jolt. Outside it was dark. I must have slept half the day. I listened for any strange sound, but heard nothing.
Then I realized what had woken me. The mysterious locked room. Now might be my last chance to check it out before Michael became more mobile. I also had to return the key to its hiding place behind the painting.
I pulled on my jeans and t-shirt and found the key. I quietly padded across the long corridor until I stood outside the mystery door. I slid the key in the lock and holding my breath I slowly turned it.
I thought the sound of the lock screeching open would surely wake anyone with alarm. I listened out for Michael. Nothing. I turned the handle slowly and pushed in the door.
Inside all was dark. I felt the wall by the door for a light switch and flicked on the room light. A single wall light illuminated a painting hanging from the far wall of a small room.
It was a portrait of a young woman who seemed strangely familiar. As I approached it, my hands instinctively flew to my mouth as I let out a gasp. The woman in the painting looked exactly like me. No, not like me. She was me.
I glanced down at the brass plaque on the ornate frame. It read: Catherine Xander, self-portrait. The painting had the familiar signature as the other paintings downstairs in Micheal’s office.
So I could only assume that Catherine Xander and Catherine X were one in the same. Either way, when she was alive she was a friend of Michael’s. But who keeps a picture of a friend in a locked room like this?
Surely this Catherine had to have been more than a friend to Michael. As I stood there shaking I realized with new meaning the true nature of all the strange looks I had received as I danced with Michael at the Charity dinner. And to a certain extent it became clear why Michael was at times acting so strange around me. All those furtive, stolen second glances and stares from him when he thought I wasn’t aware of it.
But why had he made no mention of the peculiar physical similarities between me and this Catherine X. The more I thought of it the more I knew that the only person who could shed more light on the strangest of coincidences was Robyn. If indeed it was a coincidence.
I left the room and locked the door behind me. I padded slowly back to the bedroom and climbed into bed. But I couldn’t find sleep. I was beginning to suspect that in the line of private investigation there were no such things as coincidence.
This thought led me to look at our client, Jonathan Barret and his assistant Sinclair in a new light. I sat up in bed until the first rays of dawn sunshine crept over the mountain tops.
I ventured into the small office and powered up the laptop. I jotted down the address of the art gallery. Rummaging in a drawer I found a cell phone charger that would fit mine. I plugged it in. I replaced the key to the mysterious room.
I pulled on my shoes and jacket and headed outside to the barn. It was still quite dark. I climbed into the SUV and avoided putting on the headlights. The engine started quietly.
I rolled the car down the hillside and headed for the nearest small town for our supplies. But also for answers to a few burning questions.
TWENTY TWO
The last journal of Michael Maddox.
I woke with the strangest sensation of dissatisfaction with my life. It was absurd. I had everything. More money than I could spend in many lifetimes. The world’s most beautiful women throwing themselves at me. I swam in an ocean of mindless, pleasurable sex to numb the horrors of the past. I even had a charity vocation that eased my conscience enough to allow me to sleep at night. It was perfect. And suddenly it was crumbling around me.
I needed to envelop myself in the one place that would help me think. I quickly rinsed my face, brushed my teeth and downed a liter of water to quench a fire in my throat that I knew could only be soothed by another kiss from Alice like the one that I felt took us both by surprise that night at the Charity award.
I restlessly strolled outside. The low sunshine of late summer scorched the lavender fields and released the wonderful pollen into the air. It was intoxicating to the brain. Sending me to a place of calm. A place that enabled me to plan for a turbulent future already amassing like the storms clouds stalking me from the horizon.
Fear lurked on the edges of my consciousness like the Grim Reaper. It wasn’t so much the brutal retaliation brought on me by my actions in stealing formula X. I knew someday soon that would be my reckoning and I was prepared to pay the price of the consequences. What I wasn’t prepared for was sharing the nightmare with someone.
These past few days since my life crossed paths with the most infuriating and mesmerizing woman I’ve ever met, all I could think about was how lonely I was. How my life just wasn’t enough anymore.
The antagonist of my perfect life was called Alice. But she was more than a sexual challenge to pique my interest for a week or two. She was more than a sharp mind capable of cutting me down to size like no one else had dared for all these years I’ve spent alone. She was more dangerous than I think even she understood.
Somehow the cruel hand of fate had placed her before me and now I had to understand why. What was she doing in my life? All I knew for certain was that it
couldn’t be mere coincidence. And so I rose that morning with the presumption that she wasn’t really an escort. She was certainly more. But how much more?
Our paths had miraculously converged, but where did Alice’s path diverge from mine and where did it lead? For I was sure I was bound to follow her where ever it led. Even to the ends of the world. Or to our deaths.
If that were case, and it was, then was she pulling my strings like a puppet master? Or was she a mere puppet herself? And if so, who was pulling her strings and more importantly why?
The idea that the only way I’d discover the truth was to allow Alice to unpick my carefully woven chainmail guard of steel and learn to trust her, felt like an ice pick to my soul. It wasn’t what I wanted by any stretch of the imagination. But standing on the sun bleached gravel between the endless rows of lavender extending like a pathway into my future. I realized an undeniable truth. Allowing Alice to know me truly and trusting her with all she discovered was a thing I needed like the air that I breathe.
But as much as the lavender rows mapped out a possible future, they also reflected the past that claimed me, tortured me and until now wholly devoured my thoughts. Now some ghost of love had materialized before me and called itself Alice.
I came to the river that divided one lavender field from the next. It idled by like the ancient mythological River Styx, disappearing into an underground maze of caves. Large flat sandstones were scattered across the expanse of the river. Like stepping stones across the raging indecision in mind. It was deceptively deep and treacherous.
But here was the old stone footbridge and I crossed it to the center and looked over the edge at my reflection in the water. I looked across the fields. Only in that river could I see my true self. A kingfisher dove and re-emerged with a struggling salmon. It left ripples of the past reminding me there was no one alive who could understand my pain. And even less forgive it.
In seeing all the way to the horizon, I was frustrated in knowing I could not see and therefore predict if Alice would accept me for the monster I truly was.
I turned back towards the farm, toward the past, knowing I could go on no longer. Knowing only with Alice’s help could I face the future we seemed compelled to share.
TWENTY THREE
Alice’s journal.
I parked the SUV at the top of a hill and walked down through narrow cobble streets of sun bleached medieval buildings to an early morning farmers market. My French linguistics were limited to pointing at various food stuffs and waving notes of the local currency at vendors. They in turn took my ineptitude with a mix of stiffness, disdain and outright delight.
“American, yes?” asked one fellow customer in the line to the stall with the biggest and most popular strawberries.
I nodded, knowing it was a forlorn hope to remain incognito.
“Vacation?”
I nodded and smiled again and moved on with my baskets of fruit and vegetables.
Then a thought hit me. “Can you tell me the way to the art gallery?”
The kindly rosy nosed old gentleman pointed down the street.
“Follow your nose, Mademoiselle.”
I found not a single gaudy neon sign to alert me to my destination. I had to peer into each and every shop window to see what they were selling. Such was the laid back lifestyle in this part of the world, it took me twenty minutes to walk the quarter mile stretch.
At last, I found an art gallery and pushed through the old wooden door. A single doorbell chimed above my head and alerted the proprietor to be my presence. At least that was the theory.
No one arrived. I moved around the spacious shop glancing at each and every oil painting. They were exclusively scenes of the surrounding countryside and local villages.
I settled on a picture of lavender fields and blue sky with two boys and girl running in the distance. In one corner was the familiar signature of a studied, expressive, but cautious hand. The brass plaque under the ornate frame said: lavender fields for three, by Catherine X.
I felt a shadow across my shoulder and jolted.
A man with horn rim glasses and a silver mustache gave a slight bow.
“You like?” he asked in an accent with a hint of American.
“How did you know I’m not French?” I asked.
He smiled. “Madam, I’ve lived here for thirty years and this place is still known locally as the American’s gallery. It’s the way we walk, apparently. Always with the air of haste. We never move with consideration. We Americans have yet to learn the art of savoring existence. Too much bustle about us.”
“You decided all that by watching me walk into your gallery?”
“That and my favorite strawberry concession phoned me five minutes ago to alert me at the prospect of a rich American tourist driving an expensive SUV and looking to buy art. A conversation that may cost me five percent commission. Hopefully? Georges Pompidou, at your service.”
We shook hands. “I’m, um, Alice,” I said and silently berated myself for not thinking of another name.
“A pleasure Alice. You were admiring the work of Catherine X.”
“Yes, I’m a big fan.”
“Really? She was only ever known locally. Most of her work belongs to just one owner. Indeed, lavender fields has been reserved by the famous Michael Maddox. They knew each other. Her death was such a tragedy.”
“I don’t know him,” I said.
He raised an arched eyebrow.
“Perhaps, Monsieur Pompidou, you can tell me a little more about the artist.”
He stiffened. “Clearly you are not here to buy. There’s one thing I’ve learned in the last thirty years in order to adjust to our rural French way of life. We may boast of our acquaintances, but we do not gossip. Ever. Good day, Alice.”
I left at once, feeling dejected as well as ejected from the gallery. In deep thought on the implications of Pompidou’s refusal to gossip I wondered what he was hiding as I took a step from the stony front porch.
A car horn blasted and I jolted. An SUV with blackened windows squealed to a halt and the front passenger and rear doors were flung open. Three burley men jumped out of the car and rushed at me. They grabbed my arms and flung me into the back seat.
TWENTY FOUR
Alice’s Journal
As the car doors slammed shut and the driver accelerated away from the gallery, I caught sight of Monsieur Georges Pompidou on the gallery door step as he stared after me and dialed a cell phone.
I thrust an elbow into one of my kidnappers and was about to visit another with my right hook when a familiar voice stopped me dead.
“Welcome, Alice.”
I turned to the woman driving the car. She wore dark sunglasses and a silk shawl over her head. She bit deep into one of my strawberries and smiled as the juice trickled down her bottom lip.
“Sui Lee?”
“I told you we’d meet again, didn’t I?”
“What the Hell do you want of me?”
“You?” she smiled. “You are just a pawn I’m pushing across the chessboard. It’s the king I claim and you’re going to help me take him.”
“Like Hell I am.”
She nodded to the man in the front passenger seat and he handed me a cell phone.
I took it and held it to my ear. “Hello?”
There was a terrible rasping silence on the other line. The kind that we hope never to hear in our lives. It was filled with despair. Agony. At last a small voice spoke and sent a current through me like a lightning bolt.
“Alice? Alice?”
“Emily?”
“Alice, Alice, please help me.”
“Emily, where are you?”
“They’re hurting me, Alice. Please...”
The man in the front passenger seat grabbed the cell phone from me.
Sui Lee stared at me in the rear view mirror. “If you want to see your kid sister alive and well you’ll deliver the formula to me in exactly twenty four hours.”
I
felt my entire world implode.
“Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Alice?”
I nodded. “Twenty four hours. Where?”
“Here.”
I looked through the windshield at a medieval market square.”
“If you harm one hair on Emily’s head I’ll kill you.”
The car squealed to a halt and I hit my head on the back of Sui Lee’s headrest.
I looked up at her smiling face. She removed her sunglasses and let me view her dead eyes.
“I owed you that one,” she said. “Now get out.”
The rear doors opened. The men sat beside me grabbed my arms and hurled me onto the cobble stones. My basket of fruit and vegetables was tipped over me.
I sat amongst the crushed strawberries and pomegranates staining the cobblestones with their blood red juice.
One of them threw a business card at me.
“Call that number when you’ve got it,” he said.
The car sped off.
I considered the mess I was in. Michael was a mass of contradictions that made it impossible to maintain my loathing of him. Part of me even liked him. More than I cared to admit.
I took a deep breath and forced away all my feelings about him. Everything had become mercilessly clear.
I knew then that to save Emily’s life I’d have to somehow win the trust of Michael Maddox. And then betray him. Together with a piece of my heart.
TWENTY FIVE
Alice’s Journal
I completed the shopping and then returned to the SUV. Under a windshield wiper was a hand written note. I unraveled it.
It read: Twenty four hours!
As if I needed the reminder.
I drove back to the farmhouse. I parked inside the barn, but before I climbed out I checked my face in the rear view mirror. There was a slight bruise developing on my forehead. I’d have to disguise it with makeup before I let Michael see me.
A shadow moved behind me. I spun in the seat.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” Michael said. “Thought I’d help with the groceries.”
Sorority Secrets (Campus Love and Murder Sorority Eyes Romance Book 2) Page 8